in reverse chronological order
1. On the Train to Chicago
It is painful not to move, though here we
are motionless like it's the grand prize
sitting and waiting to die on a grand
strip of sticky metal
like flies
I want to die and float above the wreckage
swaying, humming a song by joni mitchell
Flying free with the birds and the souls of the joyous.
It is painful not to move, though here
I sit motionless - thought is a mistress
and though her whip is sweet,
her pleasure is no freedom
I would rather be dead and free than be happy and die -
but I am trapped on a strip of sticky flesh, waiting like a fly
the sun is at our back - we are heading
the first sortie against the traffic
and it occurs to me that we are full of Things
songs and quotes and the girl who got off at southbend
who had great tits
and there's so much it's a wonder we don't explode when we die
showing scores of dour-black-crying people with Chelsea Mornings and red-sweatered
girls with pert breasts
but no such thing happens.
My heart cries out the bondage of this train,
full of things full of things,
ready to explode like a frag grenade full of ressentiment
I would rather swim than float
I would rather run a race than win it
and when my heart beats against my ribcage it is oblivious
to age or tiredness
it fills my fingers with blood so much it's a wonder I don't explode
and fill the inside of this train with the sticky remains of bondage.
2. needles are broken in my universe
the playing has stopped and not for
want of trying the pops have fizzled
and the booms have faded and the
jaded remainder is bones and things
it swings, it does, in a ghastly
parabola, fastly staring, daring you to move, a corpse on a wind-up spring
Dainty daily flies are the prize of
decay, let's go away let's go away to
the clouds and have our dance
and perchance meet again on some sunny day.
Let's go away, and meet again on some sunny day.
I am found naked and broken by words unspring from their casing, facing the wind
and the rain-baked brick flooring. I am moored to vocabulary! It is constabulary in its oppression! Feed me the birds and I live for a day.
Apollo apollo - follow me in the
trails of the swallows across the sky.
Follow me and fold the hours into pretty shapes, affixed in floral scapes across
a meadow. Follow through the choral
fugue of clouds, break with me into unifying
splendour across the firmament, a giver of
givers.
O sun! O king! Oh wild and terrorous thing.
Sift and decipher me.
O source! First cause of harmony! I will join in
the multitudes and if I not be a root I shall be a third
O finality of the heavens! You have given the
world a ceiling. I will make it a floor.
3. In Chinese class the teachers said
remember your roots
I did; they are dusty and hunger for moisture.
They said, honour your parents
I have; I am the son of Aristotle
they said, honour your neighbour
I have; he sleeps by the durian tree
oblivious to my footsteps.
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Monday, January 17, 2011